He did, moreover, separate religion, magic and medicine to some appreciable extent and he gave us at least the beginnings of a medical profession, approaching medicine from the scientific rather than the religious or traditional point of view. Even though his science was a poor enough thing, his doctors were none the less doctors and the medical profession to-day is entirely within its right when it goes back to Hippocrates for the fathering of it. _The Attitude of the Early and Medieval Church_ Christianity changed all this and on the whole for the worse. And yet that statement ought to be immediately qualified, for Christianity did bring with it a very great compassion for suffering, a very great willingness to help the sick and the needy. The Gospels are inextricably interwoven with accounts of the healing power of the founder of Christianity. All the later attitude of Christianity toward disease must be considered in the light of this fact. We owe to Christianity the first real hospitals, the first really compassionate and unselfish care for the sick and impulses which, as they have finally worked out, have had more to do with giving quality and direction to medicine and particularly in investing the whole practice of medicine with its true atmosphere than any other single force. And yet all this has been a long, long time coming true and for almost 1,500 years the Church and its authorities were a hindrance rather than a help and that for two or three outstanding reasons. Christianity, to begin with, sadly underestimated physical values in its overinsistence upon spiritual values. The body was at best but the tabernacle of the soul and the soul being the chief concern, whatever happened to the body was of little importance. The body was not only underestimated, it was scorned and abused, starved and scourged; it was the seat of unholy influences and impulses; its natural longings were at the best under suspicion, at the worst under absolute condemnation. Christianity, speaking through the Church, took immense care for its spiritual hygiene, though even here it went wrong because it forgot Plato's noble word, but it failed utterly in physical hygiene. Then again sickness and suffering were for the Church but the manifest punishment of some sin known or concealed. To interfere, therefore, was in some way to defeat the justice of God. Pestilences were inscrutable providences; they were the wrath of God made manifest. In the face of so stupendous a calamity anything man might do was not only futile but impertinent.